


The Arrival and Removal of Rose-Tinted Glasses

by classics_above_classics



Series: Alice Dorothy and Stories Set Elsewhere [1]
Category: Elsewhere University (Webcomic)
Genre: Allergy to Magic, Bad Taste in Pretty Girls, Emotional Manipulation, Friends to Enemies, Give-And-Take Relationship, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Magic Debts, Manipulative Relationship, Non-binary character, One-Sided Attraction, Other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-17
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-06 19:01:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,797
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18857152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/classics_above_classics/pseuds/classics_above_classics
Summary: There is a psych student in Elsewhere University who has fallen in love. It isn't as good a choice as it could be.(Love is, after all, trusting your whole heart to another. There is a danger in that trust.)





	The Arrival and Removal of Rose-Tinted Glasses

**Author's Note:**

> My first story on AO3 and my first Elsewhere University fic! Please don't hesitate to leave comments. And pardon the ten thousand things I probably got wrong. I just had to get this down. I like to think this is a good story.
> 
> Any feedback, further information, speculation, or theories are all appreciated!

There is a psych student in Dorm 4 who suspected something was wrong in Elsewhere before she Knew.

There was something off- _is_ something off- even from an outsider’s view. Salt. Iron. Nails and horseshoes. No thank-yous and no sorries and no names. Little bits and pieces of a culture of protection creeping like vines into the cracks of a student. It bleeds into media, into chats, into online discussions, something that can be read between the lines. Even to a student hopeful on the outside, it is obvious. Something _other_ is present in Elsewhere University. Something _Else_.

Alice Dorothy has always wondered about the Else.

That is not her name, of course, not her true one, but it matches enough to be tolerable, like her gender or a hat or a ribbon in her hair. Two names of two girls from the mundane, entering a new, magical world, something that blossoms with Else and will never not. Her true name is too powerful anyway, she believes, and two other names to hide it cannot be too much protection. It’s the belief, the curiosity, which brings her to apply. It’s the wonder about whether the Good Neighbours are there, the wonder about changelings and magic and spells. She gets in on a partial scholarship and suspects.

The suspicions are right.

Even with the psychology majors- not as coveted as art or English majors, thank God above that she chose to be neither- there is the creeping Else. Even in Dorm 4- not as full as Dorms 5 or 7 or 9 or 13, magic numbers as they are- there is the creeping Else. It’s everywhere here, in the classes, in the traditions, in the pardons and apologies. It’s sickening and terrifying and wonderful to see through the frames of scratched-up glasses. She’ll love it for a few years and never want to see it again.

At least, that is the plan.

Of course, she knows that plans rarely ever go as planned. All she can do is pray that hers is a rare case.

It is not.

⋈

Her room in Dorm 4 is not empty, as she assumed it would be.

“Nice to meet you, newbie!” a pretty girl greets, her eyes sparkling in the warm light of the dorm room. “Are you tired? You must be, walking up all those stairs with bags that look that heavy.”

“No, I- I’m fine, thank you. They’re not that heavy, really.”

“Still, let me get them for you.” The girl slips the backpack from Alice D.’s shoulders, setting it on the spare bed and reaching for D.’s satchel. “Newbies shouldn’t have to do this alone.”

“Thanks again.” Alice D. smiles politely, steps into the room past the odd trinket hanging from the entrance and past the little hearts carved into the wooden doorframe. She doesn’t match her roommate, this beautiful, casual girl, not with her ill-fitting glasses and her bland, worn clothes and the nervousness threatening to swallow her up. “It’s nice to meet you.”

“Same here.” The girl smiles. “You can call me Lento. What’s your name?”

“Oh! I’m F-”

No. Not right. Not here.

“… I’m Alice. Alice Dorothy.”

“Nice to meet you, Alice Dorothy.” There’s an edge to her smile that’s fading from Alice D.’s vision, one that makes her features… sickening. Beautiful. She’s not quite sure. “I’m sure you’ll love it here.”

⋈

One day into the school year, she falls in love.

The girl rooming with her is a second year, which sets off warning bells already. She’s a pleasant person, really, pleasant Lento who majors in music and who some of the older students note will probably be Taken by the end of the year, whatever that means. She plays the banjo best and offers to teach Alice D. how to play it. She forgets to say it’s freely given, but she acts like it is. In all, Alice D. thinks she likes her.

Okay, no. It’s not _thinks_. Lento’s hair is pulled into twin braids that shine beautifully even in the wonky dorm light, and her thick, small eyebrows give her face a soft, sweet quality that should not be as heart-stopping as it is. Alice D. has a crush in the first few minutes of meeting her. And it’s stupid and uncomfortable and _God save her, she’ll die if she has to change clothes in front of this girl_. So yeah. She likes her. And it’s inevitably going to bite her in the ass and throw her life into a whirl.

Alice D. accepts the offer of teaching and throws herself into banjo lessons with an intensity that she probably should not have.

Lento is accommodating and answers too many questions to be someone a curious first-year wouldn’t fall in love with. She teaches Alice D. how to cook and bake and weave with a loom snuck in from home, sings in the gardens and plays music for the scurrying mice in the walls. And she isn’t always Lento to other students. Sometimes she’s Bond Girl, Banjo Player, Mugi Kotobuki- even Two Years Till Taking, a name given by the resident jerk jock that makes her wince and is the direct reason that Alice D. happily tells Professor Ingenue about his business threatening other third-years for homework by pretending to be one of the more dangerous Involved. Sometimes, to the students with extra fingers or eyelids that blink sideways rather than downwards, she’s Fiddle-Player, Lyric-Weaver, or Girl-Who-Plays-A-Thousand-Things. Lento is sunlight in hazelnut spread and the soft twang of an A-major chord on strings and little whispers of things that make her face light up red in the middle of lunch.

And Lento is clever, too, passing little notes about the best ways to get to classes without running into Good Neighbours and offering tips for the best ones to trade trinkets with. It’s how she got her banjo, apparently. She keeps forgetting to say that anything is freely given. She plans deals and bargains for the hell of it in her free time, twisting words after words without skipping a beat. She wrings a favour from a younger Neighbour without the slightest hint of a problem, and even when he gives her a fever for it she grins brightly at the amber-stoned bracelet she spent the favour on. Frivolous, daring, clever Lento- D. can’t help but be drawn to her. She doesn’t know who could.

In all, it is too distracting, being her roommate. And very, very much worth it.

It only takes about three weeks before Alice D. would die for Lento. She doesn’t want to kiss her- not yet, not until the sickness in her stomach from the dark green Else fades away- but she wants to fall asleep in her bed and hold her hand and watch slice of life anime with her until it hits ten-thirty and they have to go to sleep.

It’s too much. It feels like too much. But even with the sickness in her throat and the twist in her stomach, she loves Lento with as much heart as she can offer. That’s all Lento asks for, really, that she be loved. So she loves her, she loves her, and hopes it’s enough.

It feels like enough.

⋈

Four weeks into the school year- is it four weeks?- there emerges a problem.

“Shit.”

“What’s wrong?” Lento asks, looking up from her perch on the bed. “Did you get hurt?”

“Nope. But these did.” Alice D. grimaces, holds up what remains of her glasses. The lens of the left side has a large crack in it, and the already taped-together frame has given in and snapped nearly in half. Nope, nope, she can’t fix this. But where does she even get new glasses in Elsewhere U? God, the world’s already blurry.

“I have some cat toes you can trade,” Lento offers, which is… weird? Why would she need to trade cat toes? Still, D. takes them anyway. “Do you think you’ll be safe, going out there at this hour?”

“It’s eight o’clock,” D. answers. It’s a response that still makes Lento frown, confused and not too surprised anymore. “You know that’s my lucky hour. Eight and four, A.M. and P.M.”

“Eight and four, A.M. and P.M.” The music major sighs. “Okay. Head over to Cat Eyes and trade. You can ask the Dorm 5 girls where she is- they should know, with how often they find her on “raids” or whatever they call it.”

“… Right.” Cat Eyes. Whoever that was. Sometimes, Alice D. swore Lento forgot she was an idiot. “See you before nine.”

She leaves before she can hear the answer.

⋈

Sometimes, Alice Dorothy likes to think she’s clever too. Because she doesn’t believe in the hours eight and four, doesn’t believe one bit in timely lucky numbers. But Lento’s taught her about the power of belief, that what she and others put their whole heart into has power here in the bounds of Elsewhere. So she makes Lento believe, instead. She makes the other Dorm 4 girls believe for her. Eight and four, A.M. and P.M., the lucky hours for the Dorm 4 girls. Their belief is protection.

And she slips a clicker from her pocket and clicks it four times in quick succession. Four clicks for the start of protection. Four clicks for the end of it. This, this warning, this signal that she can control- she believes in that. She’s made herself believe in that, psychologically strong-armed herself into that whole-hearted certainty.

Doubly protected, doubly believing. She’ll stick to the safe pathways and she’ll be fine. It will be fine.

D. leaves to find Cat Eyes with a lightened heart.

⋈

Four weeks into the school year, there emerges a problem.

It’s eight-sixteen P.M. when Alice Dorothy finds Cat Eyes, somehow still awake and peddling her wares. The girl looks up at her through cat-eyed spectacles and whistles lowly. “Well. I’ve been hearing some things about you, Lost Girl. Things involving bonds. You come to find a way to break them?”

“I have no idea what you’re talking about. And please don’t call me a girl.” D.’s fingers curl tightly over the cat toes in her pockets. They’re warm from her body heat, warm against the chill of night. She should probably have worn a jacket. “I only came here to buy some glasses. Mine… broke? And now I genuinely cannot see properly and I can’t spend any money to buy new glasses from outside because my parents would kill me when they find out because I wasn’t careful enough and… fuck. I’m rambling. Pardon me. But yeah, do you have any with a grade?”

“… You don’t know what my glasses do, do you?” There’s an exasperated tone in Cat Eyes’ voice, and Alice D. bets she’d look exasperated, too, if she could only _see her_. “Jesus. Do some research next time. They give you Sight, firstie. True Sight.”

… Oh.

“Shit,” Alice D. mutters, “Lento didn’t tell me that.”

She knows what true Sight entails. That, she knew before Elsewhere. Seeing creatures past human understanding, seeing the forms of things much better kept unseen. She doesn’t know if she can handle that. She doesn’t think she wants to. What sight she has is enough to make her sick to the stomach, to make her dry heave in the bathrooms after walking outside at the wrong time. She’ll probably end up hospitalized if she levels up to true Sight, and she doesn’t think her family’ll be happy with the hospital bills, either.

… But god damn it, she’s curious and wants to be able to look at people and not blurs. This’ll inevitably come back to bite her in the ass later. Fuck it.

“I’ll take some anyway. Do you have any with grades?”

Cat Eyes levels her with an unimpressed glare, but she brings out a load anyway.

Instantly, there’s a pair that catches Alice D.’s eye, a large, tinted, round pair with coke-bottle lenses and little wooden beads on the frame. They’re metal- of course they are, they’re probably iron painted black- and the frame is thin and the lenses are pink and she loves them already.

“Can I try that one?” she asks, pointing to the pretty circle pair. The glasses broker hands them over and she tries them on, focusing on the array of glasses spread out before her.

They’re clear. Perfectly, beautifully clear. There’s a ring of something that looks like silver along each of the frames and the edges of the lenses, a ring she doubts was there before, but god, god, is it beautiful.

“That’s the experimental pair,” Cat Eyes notes, hands folded neatly in her lap. “Silver nitrate and some salt in the beads. Crushed flower petals, too. Some of the ones meaning truth. I’m a little too wary to try them. Do they work fine?”

“They work wonderfully,” she says, because they do, they make the world clear and focused just as it should be. “How much for these?” Alice D. asks, looking up-

And she stops. Because there is very definitely something wrong.

Her hands are tied with a thousand whirling strings, all gold and silver and glimmering like sunlight. The rest of her body is too, from head to toe, every string trailing back towards the rooms of Dorm 4.

“What?” Alice D. reaches for a string, tries to grasp at it, but she catches nothing but open air. “What are these?”

“Bonds,” Cat Eyes responds, spitting the words like acid. “Favours. Debts. Whatever you call them. It’s to be expected, really, rooming with Kotobuki. You’re non-binary, then? Or male? Should have requested those dorms instead. It might have been safer.”

… Kotobuki? Lento?

Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, _fuck_. When? When did she start owing her? Why were there so many debts? God, she couldn’t even count them, all tangled and tied-up as they were. How?

“My parents were reading my application papers,” D. says, but it’s numb, automatic. “Couldn’t ask for the non-binary dorms. I owe her?”

“Yep. She played you like a fiddle.” Cat Eyes shrugs. “Or a banjo. Whatever she plays best. We really shouldn’t trust that girl with first years. God only knows why you’re rooming with her and not another first year.”

A banjo. Shit. The lessons. Not freely given. And Lento had coached her through thank-yous and sorries, correcting her every time she said either. Only correcting. Never saying it meant nothing. Shit. Was the coaching a debt, too?

“I’m going to kill her,” D. growls, clutching the clicker in her pocket like a lifeline. “I’m going to kill her.”

No. No. That won’t end a debt right, either. Not always. She’ll be hit by a million repercussions for doing that.

Okay. Something better, then. Something cleverer. Something else.

Not something Else. Never something Else.

“You have payment, firstie?” Cat Eyes taps the side of her glasses, a reminder that D. barely registers. “I can’t exactly give you those without-”

“I have sixteen cat toes.”

“Christ, did you skin a cat?” There’s genuine worry in the glasses broker’s tone.

“Nope. I got them from Lento.”

And there it is. Little things. Little offerings. Always forgetting to say that something is freely given. God, she _hates_ her roommate right now. _Hates her._

“I see.” Cat Eyes only takes four of the offered toes- odd, since Lento offered sixteen. Maybe it’s a first-year-only discount. Maybe Cat Eyes just wants a repeat customer. “I’ll take four. A fair trade. I appreciate your business.”

“It’s a pleasure.” Alice Dorothy smiles politely at her before stalking back off into the night.

⋈

Usually, when she got back to her dorm, Alice D. would click her clicker again. Would give up outside protection. She doesn’t now. There’s an odd, prickling sensation in her mind when she walks in, past the hearts in the doorframe, but she brushes it aside. She’s pretty sure it’s the glasses, the sickness magic seems to cause in her.

Because looking at Lento now, with her glasses and her protection, she can see a thousand strings, more, all leading back to her roommate.

“So you were safe.” Lento smiles, and the honest relief in it makes Alice D.’s stomach turn. She doesn’t deserve to be relieved. “That’s good. You look wonderful, by the way. Round glasses make you look so cute!”

“That’s nice to know!” D. replies, forcing a cheerful note into her voice. “I really like this pair. It’s all pink and friendly.”

“Just like you,” Lento laughs.

“Of course.”

The broken pair of glasses is still on her bed. Alice Dorothy only hesitates a second before picking them up and dropping them straight into the trash bin.


End file.
